Developments in speech recognition technologies support more natural language interaction between services systems and customers than that previously supported. One of the most promising applications of these new technologies is Automatic Call Routing (ACR). The goal of an ACR application is to determine why a customer is calling the service center and to route the customer to the most appropriate agent for servicing a customer request. Speech recognition technology generally allows an ACR application to recognize natural language statements so the application does not have to rely on a menu system. This allows the customer to state the purpose of their call “in their own words”.
In order for an ACR application to properly route calls, the ACR must generally interpret the intent of the customer, identify the type or category of customer call, and then identify the correct routing destination for the call type. Identification of all the possible call types is a time intensive and extensive phase of the service center development process, because the call types are not usually not known prior to ACR development.